In conventional 3D computer graphics rendering, a Central Processing Unit (“CPU”) generates a series of rendering commands that are then transferred to memory of a Graphics Processing Unit (“GPU”), which are then executed by the GPU.
Typically, an application executing on the CPU calls a 3D graphics application programming interface (API), such as Microsoft Direct3D, that is invariant across different types of GPUs from different manufacturers. A GPU-specific device driver installed on the computer system handles invocations of this API by generating rendering commands that are suited for the GPU that is in use on the computer system. These GPU-specific commands, when generated by the device driver and made available for execution by the GPU, are sometimes referred to as a GPU-specific command buffer.